Lena Virtanen
Writer and editor of Swap Cost Notes
Keeps a running record of what conversions actually cost, measured rather than quoted.
What Lena Virtanen covers here
Everything published on Swap Cost Notes is written by one person, and the scope is deliberately narrow: onramp, offramp, swap, corporate wallet, custody, acquiring, stablecoin payments, bitcoin payments, otc, licensing, cards, industries, exchange. Articles stay inside it rather than chasing whatever is trending.
How the writing is checked
Figures carry the date they were taken. Claims that can be verified link to a primary source rather than to another article summarising it. Where something is genuinely uncertain, the article says so instead of rounding the uncertainty away.
Corrections are published with a note saying what changed and when. If you find an error, the contact page is the fastest route.
Published on this site
- Building a Repeatable Method for Comparing Swap Costs
- Failed Swaps: What You Pay for a Transaction That Reverts
- What a Zero-Fee Swap Charges Instead
- Weekend Spreads Against Weekday Spreads, Pair by Pair
- Gas Estimates Versus Gas Paid: A Reconciliation
- Hidden Conversion Steps Inside a Single Swap
- Tracking One Pair for Thirty Days: What the Spread Did
- Minimum Sizes Where the Fixed Fee Stops Mattering
- Stablecoin to Stablecoin: The Swap People Assume Is Free
- Bridge Fees Compared Against Simply Selling and Rebuying
- How Long a Quote Holds, and What Happens When It Expires
- Aggregators Versus Direct Venues on Identical Pairs
- Round-Trip Cost: Converting Back Is Not Free
- The Cost of Swapping During a Volatile Hour
- Why Splitting a Large Swap Sometimes Costs More
- Same Swap, Five Venues: What the Difference Looks Like
- Network Fee or Spread: Which Dominates at Which Size
- Slippage on Thin Pairs, Measured Rather Than Estimated
- Quoted Rate Versus Executed Rate: A Month of Observations
- Measuring the True Cost of a $1,000 Swap